TC: Tableau Comparé des Écritures Babylonienne et Assyrienne Archaiques et Modernes, par A. Amiaud et L. Mechineau. TEA: Der Tontafelfund von El Amarna, herausgegeben von Hugo Winckler. TR: Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana, by Wm. K. Loftus. Table of Contents Page Introduction 1 Chapter I 21 Transliteration, Translation and Commentary, Hymn to Bel Chapter II 42 Transliteration, Translation and Commentary, Hymn to Sin Chapter III 55 Transliteration, Translation and Commentary, Hymn to Adad Chapter IV 70 Transliteration, Translation and Commentary, Hymn to Tammuz Glossary 81 Introduction The gods honored in the hymns treated in the following Thesis are Bêl, Sin (Nannar), Adad (Ramman) and Tammuz, all deities of the old Babylonian pantheon, representing different phases of personality and force, conceived of as incorporated in nature and as affecting the destinies of men. These gods are severally designated in the hymns as follows: in Tablet 13963, Rev. 1, “O Bêl of the mountains;” in Tablet 13930, Obv. 2, “O father Nannar;” in Tablet 29631, Obv. 10, “O Ramman, king of heaven”; and in Tablet 29628, Obv. 3, “The lord Tammuz” (CT. XV, 10, 15, 16, 17 and 19). The attributes and deeds belonging to these divinities are adduced from a wide range of literature, beginning with the royal inscriptions of the pre-dynastic periods and ending with the inscriptions of the monarchs of the later Babylonian empire. In fact, the building inscriptions of the Babylonians, the war inscriptions of the Assyrians, the legendary literature, the incantations, as well as the religious collections, particularly the hymns, afford us many descriptions, of greater or less length, of all the Babylonian gods. To aid the student in understanding better the character of the four gods whose hymns have been translated in the following Thesis, I here give a brief descriptive sketch of each of the deities whose praises were sung in the documents which I have chosen to render. 1. _Bêl_